The Resilient Person's DNA

Rob Asghar
, ContributorI'm sussing out the true laws of physics of leadership.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Fall seven times, stand up eight. –Japanese proverb

“Energy and persistence conquer all things,” Benjamin Franklin once said. And Bill Bradley, the former US Senator, Rhodes Scholar and Hall of Fame NBA player, described ambition as the path to success, while “persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.”

As wise as those words are, we could improve them by replacing persistence with resilience. After all, persistence implies continuing up the stairway even when you’re tired—but resilience implies continuing up the stairway even after you’ve fallen a flight or two and perhaps fractured a bone.

An examination of the lives of resilient people, who’ve achieved success after setbacks, suggests that their eventual success can be traced to a few key traits or strands of their mental DNA:

Unrealistic expectations. It turns out that people who are soberly realistic aren’t as resilient as people who are optimistic. A little healthy self-delusion about the future helps us weather storms better than the most accurate National Weather Service forecast might.

Those who survive failure and go on to succeed don’t do so by accident or by talent alone. It’s usually part of their mental make-up. Take Seattle Seahawks Head
Coach Pete Carroll, who was fired twice from the NFL before becoming one of only three people to win titles at both the college and pro level. He credited his mother, who always believed that "something good is just about to happen."

Optimists are people who expect more kisses in their future, more strolls in the park. And that anticipation enhances their wellbeing. In fact, without the optimism bias, we would all be slightly depressed. People with mild depression, they don't have a [negative] bias when they look into the future; they're actually more realistic than healthy individuals.

A readiness for surprise. The resilient person knows that surprises aren’t always pleasant initially. But their readiness for the unexpected serves them well, because of their third strand:

A strong belief that “we can work with this.” The resilient person knows that even the most unexpected or unwelcome situation contains the raw material for great possibilities. As Winston Churchill noted, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” (And given how many times Churchill ran into difficulty, often of his own making, he may have been one of history's great optimists.)

Resilient people naturally have jazz-like personalities, even if they don’t listen to the genre.

“Do not fear mistakes,” Miles Davis said. “There are none.” Mozart’s 41st symphony is perfection, as is Beethoven’s Fifth, as is Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven (no matter who wrote it). But jazz feeds off mistakes in a special way, as combos give each member permission to experiment, to bungle, and then to turn odd twists into good turns.

Ordinary people blame circumstances, and they’re perfectly justified in doing so, since circumstances are damnable things that rarely cooperate. In the process, they acquire what psychologist Martin Seligman termed “learned helplessness.”

Seligman, the father of positive psychology, noted that depression and other maladies come soon after. It takes some work to "learn optimism" and to believe that you can change your circumstances for the better.

“The best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain,” wrote Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Once it’s raining, resilient people set about selling umbrellas until they have enough money to move to a sunnier climate.

“Choose to be optimistic,” said the Dalai Lama, “it feels better.” But it does more than feel good. It does good.

Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude. --Emerson

The need to be grateful is now a cliché in our self-help era. And it remains out of most people's reach. Only the person who welcomes the opportunity to turn odd things into good things can muster it. They know they’re growing and blossoming, and they thank not only the sun for that, but the rain too. And the fertilizer.

That attitude and that ethic conspire to make good things happen, which then just reinforces the first strand of the resilient person’s DNA: the belief that good things are at hand. It’s a virtuous circle of success, one that survives even the most powerful temporary setbacks.

Rob Asghar is the author of Leadership Is Hell: How to Manage Well and Escape with Your Soul, now available at Amazon.

"Do not fear mistakes," said jazz great Miles Davis. "There are none." (Photo credit: Wikipedia)